Democratic Racism “Bubbles Up”

Try to imagine the 4^th congressional district of Georgia.  It is a mostly black district represented by second term Congressman Hank Johnson.  The district was represented for many years by one of the most celebrated nutcases in congressional history, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.  It is a district which proves, if nothing else, that fools and idiots have a right to be represented in Congress just like everyone else.

After being defeated in 2002, McKinney served as a member of the 9/11 Commission… apparently under the theory that only another insane person could possibly understand the insanity of flying planeloads of innocent people into large buildings just to make a political point.  Then, in 2004, McKinney was one of 100 prominent Americans who signed a petition calling for new investigations into the 9/11 disaster. 

After being reelected in 2004 she took up where she left off two years earlier, criticizing the Bush Administration over the 9/11 attacks and introducing articles of impeachment against President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.  However, her congressional career came to an abrupt end when she punched a Capitol Hill Police officer who failed to recognize her as a member of Congress.  Although it is hard to imagine how the voters in her district could be outraged by any aberrant behavior, apparently the act of striking a police officer was too much even for them.  

She was defeated by the incumbent, Hank Brown, in the 2006 Democratic primary and Brown took her seat in Congress.  According to a September 15 article by Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer Cynthia Tucker, “Until now, Hank Johnson, a quiet (even boring) Buddhist, has been the perfect antidote to Cynthia McKinney… But today, he went off on a little McKinney-like tirade.  He told reporters that he supports a resolution reprimanding Joe Wilson (R-SC) because Wilson’s heckling (of Barack Obama) could lead us back to the days of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Referring to Wilson’s “you lie!” challenge to Obama, Johnson said, “It did not help the cause of diversity and tolerance with his remarks.  If I was a betting man, I’d say it instigated more racist sentiment, feeling that it’s OK, that you don’t have to bury it down… I guess we’ll probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside, intimidating people.  That’s the logical conclusion if this kind of attitude is not rebuked.”

That incendiary remark was followed by an equally racist statement by former President Jimmy Carter.  When asked by an NBC reporter about the growing animosity toward Obama and his radical healthcare reform proposal, Carter said, “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man,”

He went on to say that this “racism inclination still exists.  And I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country.  It’s an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply.”

Such racist statements could only come from Democrats.  They represent thoughts that simply do not pass through the minds of conservatives and Republicans.  It was, after all, Republicans who fought and died to eliminate slavery in America.  It was Republicans who wrote and passed the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments, outlawing slavery and giving blacks citizenship and the right to vote.  It was Republicans who consistently wrote and supported civil rights legislation, from 1854 through the civil rights era of the 1950s and ‘60s, against strong Democratic opposition.

It was Democrats, northern and southern, who supported the extension of slavery through the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  It was Democrats who opposed the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments.  It was Democrats who wrote and passed the Black Codes and the Jim Crow Laws as a means of keeping black people “in their place” in the post-emancipation era; and it was Democrats who created the Ku Klux Klan as a paramilitary arm of their party, designed to murder and/or intimidate blacks and white Republicans.    

In an uncharacteristic moment of candor, Carter once admitted that he had “lusted in his heart” after women other than his wife.  It is entirely possible, even likely, that as a lifelong Democrat from the deep South, Carter’s racist remarks are nothing more than a “bubbling up” of his own deep-seated enmity toward blacks, burned into his heart and soul throughout his lifetime. 

It should not go unnoticed that Carter’s own well-documented anti-Semitism, coupled with what appears to be a latent streak of anti-black sentiment, coincides quite nicely with much of the Ku Klux Klan handbook.  Add just a touch of homophobia, an attitude toward sexual orientation that he almost certainly holds,  and his personal manifesto on race, ethnicity, and lifestyle would be indistinguishable from that of the Third Reich.

Is it possible that racist attitudes are at the root of some of the anti-Obama fervor?  Of course.  But it does not come from Republicans and conservatives; it comes from an ever-growing disenchantment among members of his own party.

In the early months of Obama’s term he enjoyed the enthusiastic support of nearly 60% of the U.S. population.  They were people who voted for him either because he was black, because he was a Democrat, or because they agreed with his radical left agenda.  Those who voted for him because he was black, or because they agreed with his radical left agenda, are largely still with him.  It is the other one-third or more of his support base… the “rednecks,” the “yellow dog” Democrats, discerning Independents, and a significant number of moderate to conservative blacks who didn’t just “fall off the turnip truck”… that he is losing in large numbers.

The remaining 40% of the population, conservatives and Republicans, were never with him and it was NOT because of the color of his skin.  That was a non-issue because they would have enthusiastically supported a black woman, Condoleezza Rice, as a candidate on the Republican ticket. 

Many of those whose support Obama is now losing were Clinton supporters… middle and lower income whites, poor whites, unionized factory and construction workers, “rednecks,” and “yellow dogs.”   They were people who, during the long primary season, found it difficult to refer to him without mentioning the color of his skin.  However, once Hillary was defeated by the party’s far left fringe, almost all of those “hereditary” Democrats experienced a “come to Jesus moment.”  Because they were Democrats, and because the Democratic Party is more of a religion to them than the church they attend on Sunday, they swallowed their pride and pulled the lever for Obama. 

They were joined by a great many independents who simply chose to overlook his radical left agenda, his open-ended promises of “hope” and “change,” his plans to “spread the wealth,” his promise to “bankrupt coal-burning power plants” and drive electric power costs “through the ceiling,” his enthusiastic support for “cap-and-trade” legislation, and a host of other promises, any of which promised to do severe damage to our economy and to our republican form of government. 

But then, after seeing Obama’s runaway spending, and after coming face to face with the notion that, under his cap-and-trade proposal their taxes, heating and cooling, gasoline, and electric power costs could rise by as much as $3,000 or $3,500 per year, per family, they began to have second thoughts.  And when Obama moved on to healthcare reform and promised to do the impossible… insure some 47 million uninsured, while reducing costs and improving quality… they suddenly knew they’d been had.  Even those who can’t seem to figure out that minimum wage increases are always a “wet blanket” on the economy, and invariably cause millions of entry level workers to lose their jobs, were  suddenly able to figure out that Obama was just another fast-talking snake oil salesman.

For many of those dedicated Democrats Obama is no longer the “glib young black guy with a teleprompter.”  He is back to being, simply, “that black s.o.b.”  To the extent that race enters into Obama’s falling poll numbers, the losses are essentially all within his own party.  

The American people are smart enough to know who is being honest with them and who is not.  And they are smart enough to recognize what has become a standard Democratic card trick.  They see that whenever Democrats can’t win on the merits of the issues, they invariably play the race card.  It’s getting to be a tiresome old trick and the voters will likely decide to change the game when they enter the voting booths in November 2010. 

Taken together, all of these reactions are evidence of one thing.  The American left is coming apart like a cheap sweater and Barack Obama is the guy who is pulling the strings.  Jimmy Carter seems to think that racism has “bubbled up to the surface” because many white people believe that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country.”  Well, Jimmy, you’re only partly right.  I could name a number of black men and women who would be capable of leading our great country.  Unfortunately, Barack Obama is not one of them.